Do Not Pass Go

Is it just me, or does the new U.S. currency look like they’ve just been pulled out of someone’s washing machine?

I dunno about this Monopoly money. For one, it doesn’t have the clean crispness of greenbacks. The new dollah is ugly up close, and after a few years of being folded, creased and crumpled in hundreds of pockets, I’m pretty sure it’ll look uglier.

Secondly, once the new dollars become widely used, people will be able to tell at a glance whether the bills I pass are conterfeit. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ll miss having WalMart cashiers hold my $50 bills up to the light to verify that negros in drug-free neighborhoods can actually get ahold of such currency.

Used to be that all you needed was a DeskJet and the right kind of paper to print your own money, but now that’s all shot to hell. Thanks a lot, John Snow.

Update: Yeah, yeah, I know Snow is new to the job. But still, he could’ve put the kibosh on the project and saved folks from having to go buy color LaserJets.